Play is at the heart of everything we do as teachers. I have been collaborating with a group of people passionately committed to putting play at the center of teaching, learning, community and culture. As part of our coming out party I wrote a “play manifesto” that I hope any number of individuals, families, schools, organizations and communities can use to galvanize their commitment to play. Here it is!
As it has been, and will be, conclusively demonstrated in this moment, all the best fruits of human culture and civilization spring from the play impulse as it operates in humankind, other animals, and the very fabric of matter itself. Children, and all people, learn, grow and actualize their full potentials in the process of play. We come forward at this crucial juncture in time, as the advocates for a new play culture. As teachers, artists, scientists, musicians, storytellers, activists, farmers, builders, tricksters, movers and booty shakers, we gather to create new spaces for play to emerge as the dominant creative force in our multicultural world. Players of the world unite and join together in a new freedom and a new happiness. Let us create spaces where we can share different games and ways of playing together, where we can play to our hearts’ contents. Let’s summon a new ethic of participation, inclusion, and engagement where profound risks can be taken and deep healing can take place. Let us go outside and reconnect with the natural world, loaf in the grass, climb trees and mountains, build seesaws and bridges, go river walking, make fairy houses, invent medicines, create shelters and clubhouses, caves and castles, where people can conspire to make the world a better place. We can learn how to talk and live with the animals again, and join in elective affinities with the elemental beings of the earth. We can go on adventures, find common ground, delight in each other and every living thing. Unleash the inherent creativity of every child. Demand that schools become playgrounds of learning, love and connection, open up work spaces where curiosity, wonder, and delight can flourish and thrive. See different life stages as a continuum of play, learning, growth, development and rebirth. Support people of all ages and in every situation and station of life in seeing play as the fundamental key to unlocking the secrets of the universe. He/she/we/they, genderful and wonderful, we encourage every unthinkable thought, wild transformations and ecstatic transmogrifications. Play is the bridge between the dreamworld and reality. Through playing we tap into deep wells of power and abundance. We will find magic doors, secret passage ways, invisible seams and rewrite the maps of the world to honor the sacred vitality and wisdom of the children and the elders. From Afro Futurism to Indigenous Science, we welcome a new openness and interactivity between different language games and ways of knowing and being. We will archive and assemble gargantuan lists of games and ways to play and we will share them freely. We will play dice with Heraclitus’s children and will privilege the world of becoming, growth and the sacred tree of life. We will plant the seeds, craft the spaces, and plunge into the democratic politics of creative, community transformation, communication and development. We will learn how to grow and eat food that is truly nutritious, braid the sweetgrass, frolic with the flowers, and nibble and delight in the candy houses we find in the darkest woods. We aim to topple the traditional hierarchies and tables of values with the laughter and seriousness of play. We will all contribute to the circus of souls and be quick to praise folly, as much as we bow in reverence to the earth, the air, the fire, and the water. We will sing, make music and dance, listen to the old stories and retell them in new and beautiful ways. We will discover new and old ways of relating to ourselves, each other and the world that do not rely on domination and servility, exploitation and plunder, but rather on generosity, abundance, care and delight in the well-being and flourishing of each other. Oh, we will compete and fight, squabble and wrestle, seek to shine above the rest and hide in our dark nests, but ultimately we will open ourselves up to the fundamental spaciousness and interconnectedness of all things. We will learn how to listen to one another so that we can actually participate in the meaningful stuff of each other’s lives. We will help each other learn how to play as individuals and as families, organizations and communities. We will rediscover and reimagine the true joy and pleasure of living as a way to take care of this garden of earthly delights, this good earth, these celestial spheres, and find ways of playing, wondering, and growing that honor the sacred aspirations of our lives.
